As I sit here typing I'm reminded of what happened at roughly 4 p.m. Central Standard time at my office (about an hour ago); especially since my hands still smell like 'fire extinguisher'. While specifying instrumentation tag names on a flow drawing my attention is turned towards the haze building up on the other side of the engineering area. I started hearing some distant prattle about “fire”, “hmmm... what could this possibly be?” I think to myself. Upon further investigation I've come to the conclusion that someone's Dell laptop just freakin blew up and started a cozy little desktop fire!!!

Since I’m not in the mood for S’mores... "Oh, this is priceless" I think to myself; as I turn straight back to my desk where, from within my back-pack, I whip out my 7.2MP digital camera.

One of our IT guys put out the flames (yes, I said flames) and thusly covered the entire area with fire extinguisher ‘material’. The battery burned its way straight through the laptop creating the beautiful hole with which is so beautifully depicted in the picture. The fire department showed up. The police department showed up. The entire lower floor was allowed to leave early and as we stood there in front of the building we simply couldn’t resist... we jokingly called the engineer a terrorist as he was being asked a few questions by the friendly officer.

The most priceless moment of this entire ordeal is something that I, with regret, do not have a picture of. While taking pictures through the haze (after everyone had evacuated the area and before the fire department came to kick us out), the engineer who’s laptop it was had been spotted out of the corner of my eye. Apparently he heard there was a fire and that we all had to go outside. Being the noble engineer that he is, he quickly wanted to grab his laptop!!! HAHAHA The look on his face, as he stretched out his arms in disbelief was priceless!!! Again, I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of that... I was laughing too damn hard! (I was only able to get a picture of him walking away, as I was intermittently laughing and coughing at the same time)

Here are a few pictures, please enjoy them as much as the Dell representatives and the AWESOME crew over at THG surely will when I send them the link.